Car News, Specs and Reviews

Peugeot Moovie

It was nothing to do with Hollywood films, or cows, or films featuring cows. No, the Moovie was the winner of the Peugeot Design Competition in 2005 and appeared out of left field like some renegade escape pod from a passing spaceship.

Created by Portuguese designer Andre Costa, this was slick personal city transport unlike anything that had previously been seen outside the pages of a science fiction comic.

Sitting on concealed wheels and appearing to hug the ground, the Moovie looked like a large polycarbonate-glazed comma, with a sweeping curved front framed in chrome. Inside was a pair of simple moulded seats behind a control console with a stylish single-spoke steering wheel and two instrument pods, all atop a central pillar.

Beside each seat was a large circular viewport framed in blue, with a proud Peugeot lion affixed in the centre. The Moovie’s circular sides doubled as access doors, hinging forwards. The interior was finished in two contrasting shades of yellow.

Peugeot’s objective was never to find a workable car, but rather to see what the imagination of the world’s most creative wannabe (and established) automotive designers might produce when asked to create the Peugeot of the future they would most like to drive, with the shackles of practicality thrown off.

But that’s not to say that the winning concept remained unrealized, for the grand prize was a full-scale model lovingly overseen by the Peugeot Style Centre and built over a three-month period to the exacting standards used to create the company’s concepts cars.

And indeed it was at the Frankfurt Motor Show that the Moovie was shown to general admiration, whilst Peugeot gleaned maximum publicity from their design comp’s winning entry by sanctioning a full production run . . . of 1/43 scale models.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

France

FIRST MANUFACTURED:

2005

ENGINE:

N/A

PERFORMANCE:

N/A

YOU SHOULD KNOW:

The Moovie had to be pretty special, after coming out on top in a design competition that attracted 3,800 entries from no fewer than 107 countries, with 2,600 designers testing their skills against the strong international field.